The BBC, Britain's publicly funded media organization, has been widely
criticized after revelations that TV presenter, Jimmy Saville, who died
in 2011, had been abusing children. More recently, the BBC's flagship TV
news program, "Newsnight," wrongly accused a politician of being a
pedophile, leading to its director-general, George Entwhistle, stepping
down.

The crisis at the BBC follows on from a public Leveson Inquiry into the
state of British journalism after it was revealed that journalists were
widely involved in phone hacking. Does the recent scandal at the BBC
indicate a deeper and longer-term crisis in the British media? I discussed these issue with Charlie Beckett, a former BBC
staffer and the head of POLIS, a media think tank at the London School
of Economics.

It is debatable, of course, whether the BBC is in
crisis. But if you accept that the BBC does have problems, that it is in
need of reform, what are the main problems at the BBC? Is it a case of
dwindling resources? A crisis in the organization's ethics and mission?
Or a bloated and over-complicated bureaucracy?

I think it's a mixture of things, inevitably. I
think we do have to remember that the BBC is an extraordinary
institution that creates an incredibly range of wonderful output, both
locally, nationally, and internationally -- some of the highest-quality
journalism and drama that you're ever going to enjoy. But I think that
there is a problem.

One is about money. News, for example, has had 20 percent cutbacks and
it's very difficult to adjust to that in the short term. I think
definitely there's been a culture for the last 10, 15 years where too
many of the top people have been lifetime BBC hands who perhaps don't
have an objective view of the way they run things. And that may have
bred a culture of too much bureaucracy and more of an attitude as much
as numbers.

It's not just that there were too many bureaucrats or the BBC was too
big. It was more that there wasn't a proper sense of responsibility,
there wasn't a proper sense of dynamic, proactive management rather than
just playing safe.

In terms of the proactive management, in terms of what
you've referred as the problems in attitude, what do you think the BBC
should do to address that?

I think the first thing is not to panic. The
fundamentals of the BBC are very strong and it's never been more needed,
both in Britain and I think around the world to have that kind of
culture, that kind of product that the BBC creates, that is objective
and high quality.

Yet I do think they need to look very hard at the leadership of the BBC.
They need to strengthen the director-general by getting in a
high-powered person from elsewhere and giving them much more support.
But at the same time, they have to shorten the chain of command. They
have to have fewer people between what actually gets produced at the BBC
and all those other top managers who approve it. I would suggest they
need to devolve more to the program centers and give them more
responsibility rather than always second-guessing them.

To quote the "Daily Mail," often a critic of the BBC:
"With a 5 billion pound annual budget, five main television channels,
more journalists than all of Fleet Street put together, a sprawling
radio network, international business arm and ubiquitous website, isn't
it simply too big for its own good?" What would you say to that?

I don't think it's just the absolute size. If you're
going to cut it, which bit are you going to cut? Because people like the
sprawling radio networks, they like the soap operas, they love the
music, and they've all loved different types of music. So which bit do
you want to cut? It will probably annoy various "Mail" readers if you
cut the bit that they like, perhaps [the long-running radio series] "The
Archers."

I think it's not so much just the size, but the BBC ought to be handing
over some of those functions, or sharing them, or [making] partnerships
with other organizations, so it asks itself whether other media
organizations, or even charities and so on, whether it could work with
them so the BBC has less ownership.

The problem is that the BBC has become very defensive about what it
does. There are these kind of barons that run the BBC's bits and they
don't want to give up. They have never retreated on anything over the
last 10 years. It just keeps getting bigger even when the money gets
less so. I agree, there needs to be some sort of retrenchment, some sort
of cutback, but a lot of it can be done by partnership rather than by
axing things.

When you talk about partnerships, can you give me an example of what you mean by that?

Well, at the local level for example, why can't we
have more community organizations and citizens involved in creating
local radio? Why can't we have sports [coverage] be semiprivatized, why
can't you franchise them out? So I think there's a lot of opportunities
for the BBC to get other people in. We can retain the BBC brand, but you
can have the injection -- not just of other people like an independent
producer -- but actually bringing in other ideas. Because funnily
enough, the BBC is wonderful, but it doesn't necessarily know
everything.

One of the most interesting things for outside observers
is watching how the BBC has been covering itself and putting its senior
executives under scrutiny across its radio and TV stations. In many
parts of the world, with state-funded or public-funded broadcasters,
that sort of self-evaluation and self-scrutiny would be absolutely
unthinkable. Is that a sign of health at the BBC?

It is. It's very painful to watch, especially when it
goes wrong. I think a confident organization, one that has genuine
public support, shouldn't be frightened of putting itself under the
spotlight in public. I think it is a necessary part of the therapy, if
you like, of this current crisis. But longer term, it's really important
that the BBC, if it wants to have 5 billion pounds ($7.9 billion) a
year, if it wants to be so central to public life in Britain and of
course around the world, then it needs to be accountable. And that's
more than [senior BBC executives] just going on air to be interviewed
[by the BBC].

I think they also need to open up the way they work. They are still a
bit too defensive. And while it's much, much better than most state
broadcasters around the world, it's also much better than private media
companies. [Media tycoon] Rupert Murdoch, even when he was facing the
phone-hacking scandal, was very reluctant to be held publicly
accountable. Well done to the BBC for at least trying to be honest.

Does the BBC have this sense of self-scrutiny because of
its status as a public-funded broadcaster? Or is it something about the
culture of news reporting at the BBC? Or a bit of both?

I think it's a bit of both. In some ways, the
formality of the accountability can get a bit stifling. They produce a
report every year which the director-general then has to go in front of
MPs and that's a formal kind of accountability. They also do road tours,
where viewers and listeners can ask BBC people questions.

But especially in an age of social media, it's about having a continuing
conversation, trying to be as open and transparent and trying to show
that you're really listening to what the public are saying. And part of
that is about getting more people from outside the BBC into the
management so that they get a genuine perspective of how people think.

Just watching the coverage on the BBC over the last few
days, it does seem they've been perhaps overdoing the self-scrutiny.
It's been continuous and seems perhaps a bit out of proportion compared
to the other news happening around the world. Isn't there something a
little bit self-indulgent, a get-out clause, where they're saying if we
do this [self-scrutiny] now perhaps this would lessen the need for
reform? Is this perhaps a bit of a smokescreen?

Yes, I think there may be some truth in this. I'm
fascinated by the crisis because I used to work at the BBC and my job is
to look at the media. I would say, though, that if we want to know
about all those other issues in the world, such as child abuse; if we
want to know about the European financial crisis; if we want to know
about corruption of politicians, then we need good journalism.

In Britain and around the world, the BBC does represent good journalism,
and so I think it's worth taking a few days to have a really good hard
look about whether the BBC does have a structural problem here, how can
it reform itself. I agree with your point, though, that there is a
danger that having this kind of public chest-beating and
self-flagellation -- that the BBC can say, well, we've been through this
purging experience, now leave us alone and we'll get back to business.

I'm sure a lot of people in the BBC right now just want to get on with
their jobs and I think that's fair enough. But I would definitely say
that the leadership shouldn't just be saying, right, let's get a grip,
get control back, and business as usual. Because I think there was a
genuine appointment of [former director-general] George Entwhistle, but
he was an honorable man who probably sensed that he did need to reform
the BBC and I hope we don't just forget that need for reform just
because Entwhistle has paid that price.

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